"This is way past the time where ignorance is acceptable," said Andi Weiss Bartczak of Gardiner.

She would like to see study of tick-borne illnesses become a larger part of continuing education programs for doctors.

Medical professionals need to consider Lyme even when it's not readily apparent, said March Gallagher of Rosendale. Gallagher, for example, wasn't able to drive after the illness hit, but the problem didn't actually stem from her eyes.

"Prevention is not sufficient," she said. "We have tons of people who are sick in Ulster County and don't know it."

Dan LeFever of Shokan has spent $500,000 on Lyme-related medications since the illness cropped up in 2000. But every time he needed treatment, he would travel all the way down to New Jersey.

"Ulster County does not have any true Lyme-literate doctors," LeFever said. He believes local doctors are 12 to 15 years behind their peers in Connecticut, New Jersey and in Westchester and Rockland counties.

Barbara Joyce-Lambert of Hunter spent 45 years as a nurse. But she was shocked at how doctors treated her once she began complaining of mysterious aches and pains.

"My suffering from the past three years has come almost as much from the medical and insurance industry as from my illness,' said Joyce-Lambert, who said she has spent $15,000 on diagnosis and treatment.

Jill Auerbach's teenage son would go home and cry into his pillow as his mother spent month after month struggling with the debilitating disease.